Thought Experiment Link
The thought experiment we decided to link into our game is the ‘Beetle in a Box’ experiment by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The experiment involves multiple participants all being given a box with a ‘beetle’ in each box. The box may contain something or there may be nothing in the box, but no matter what is in the box the person with the box will only be able to describe what is in the box as a ‘beetle’ and will try to describe it the best way they can. The ‘beetle’ in this experiment is meant to represent pain and is used to show that no matter what people are feeling they will never be able to explain it in a way that another person would explain it. For example, someone would look in their box and see whatever was in the box they were given, they would then describe it to someone as best they could, but the other person would not be able to understand fully what the person was talking about. The second person would then look in their box and even if they had the exact same thing, they would describe it differently, this is to show that even if two people are experiencing the exact same pain, they would not be able to describe it the same way. This shows that people all think differently even if they are experiencing the same thing and no matter how hard they try they will not be able to explain it to another person in a way that allows the other person to completely understand what they are feeling. This links into our game ‘Pandora’s Box’ as the player will be given a box at the start with five locks on it, each lock will break as the player beats a puzzle. The box represents the players sanity and as they progress through, they will slowly unlock the box regaining their sanity. As this happens they will try to explain what is happening to the narrator so that they understand what is happening but no matter how hard the player character tries they will never be able to explain what is in the box or what is happening to the narrator in a way that they understand and to the narrator it will only come across as rambling due to the player being insane. They will explain that they are hallucinating and try to explain the hallucinations and the glimpses they get into the real world to the narrator, but he will not understand it at all and will become confused by what the player is saying. This links in to our game because just as the participants in the experiment are never able to fully explain the ‘beetle’ in their box, the player character is never able to explain what they are experiencing or explain what is in the box. The narrator will react differently each time to each explanation due to the narrator suffering from Dissociative identity disorder meaning that the narrator has multiple personalities living in one body. The narrator will frequently switch between the two personalities meaning that they will react differently each time the player character tries to explain what is happening to them and what is in the box. To go into further detail about Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D), it is when a person has multiple personalities that they will switch between frequently. These multiple personalities cause the person to have trouble remembering certain events and will mean they have large gaps in their memory beyond what can be described as ordinary forgetfulness, Dissociative Identity Disorder also causes shifts in a person behaviour and the way they act in a very noticeable way making it very clear when a change has occurred. Giving the narrator this Disorder suit quite well within our concept as it will amplify the struggle that the player character is having describing the box and the hallucinations and means that they will have to figure out when the narrator has switched and which of the two versions will be assisting them and which one will be hindering them. The narrator will have a very extreme version of the Disorder and will act very differently at times making it slightly easier for the player to tell when a change has occurred. Ryan Beattie - 1701246 RELATED ARTICLES Story Characters Art and Setting Puzzles and Mechanics